Icebreaker games help energize people, drive lively discussions and encourage participants to be more active throughout the meeting. This collection of icebreaker games is a great source of more ideas that will work in both remote and live settings. This is an incredibly simple game, but it can also create space for great conversations that help teams of any size or maturity get more familiar with one another and have some laughs too! For a more directed experience, invite groups to make a personal wish, a professional wish for the company and a wish for someone else on their team. These wishes can make for interesting discussions that can feed into the rest of your workshop.
1 What Are The Icebreakers For A Large Virtual Meeting?
- Simon might make you do the funniest things – from switching off your camera and popping back on with a funny face to making you mimic a statue.
- Give a few moments and then have everyone press enter at the same time.
- This is an incredibly simple game, but it can also create space for great conversations that help teams of any size or maturity get more familiar with one another and have some laughs too!
- Virtual icebreakers are activities or games that are designed to help break down barriers and kick-off virtual workshops or events in a productive, welcoming manner.
Line-Up is a quick icebreaker game where players have to form an orderly line without any discussion or verbal cues. Start by asking people to form a line based upon a predetermined criteria (like height, length of company tenure or color of each person’s eyes etc.). The Rain icebreaker is a simple, zero-prep way to help everyone to be present and engaged at the start of your meeting. By getting everyone in the room participating in the same goal, this icebreaker can quickly help everyone “arrive” in the session. Name Game is an effective icebreaker to use at the start of a course, workshop or meeting where people don’t know each other’s names.
If you’re familiar with breakout rooms, you’ll appreciate this one. Each person shares three statements about themselves, two true and one false. Ask participants to share where they’re joining from in a word cloud poll. This creates a nice visual moment, especially when people are spread across countries or time zones.
You’ll definitely learn a lot of interesting stuff about each other. At Slido, we run this type of quiz when we introduce a new team member or as a holiday fun activity. These are great get-to-know-you games and longer team-building activities that will both entertain people and bring the team closer together.
Giving people a practical example of how to respond to an icebreaker can help everyone feel at ease and ensure group understanding. As a leader, demonstrating vulnerability and openness can also encourage others to do the same, leading to a more positive and fun atmosphere. As facilitator, try going first or giving an appropriate example to help kick things off effectively. The Desert Island Game is a great, remote-friendly exercise for a team to work together and share opinions.
After 45 seconds, groups then imagine its 10 years in the future and the speaker shares what they’ve done in that time. Have the listener respond by enthusiastically saying “And because of that” in response to what the speaker says. After a completed round, swap roles and go again so that everyone has the chance to think about future. Your Amazing Future is a powerful icebreaker for helping people think about setting goals, connect to the future and get energized. Standing in a circle, group members reach across to connect hands with different people. The group then tries to unravel the “human knot” by unthreading their bodies without letting go of each other people’s hands.
Charades One person will stand at the front of the room and silently act out a famous TV show, movie or book, but you can include other categories, too. This game always gets people laughing and works great for a smaller group. Shared Drawing Pass around a drawing sheet, and have each person add an element to the drawing until it is complete.
These virtual event activities work best when you have a little more time to play with and want attendees to genuinely interact rather than just respond to a prompt. Madlibs is one of the quick icebreakers for virtual meetings that always work. Prepare a short fill-in-the-blank paragraph loosely https://lovefortreview.com/ related to the session topic or the general theme of the event, and ask attendees to submit words to complete it. Running a standalone poll at the start of a session is one of the easiest virtual icebreakers for work to get immediate participation from the room.
Show a funny or surprising image and ask participants to submit a caption. This works well in large groups because everyone can participate without speaking. Simply describe your session in a prompt and get tailored interaction ideas. As a facilitation trick, use the answers for a fun commentary or spring board for the topic of your meeting. This is easy to answer and works especially well while people are still joining the meeting.
Let People Know Why You’re Running The Icebreaker
After the demo, we recommend breaking people into small groups of 3-4 people to play this icebreaker. This allows everyone to have a voice and to actually form connections, rather than simply shouting over one another or falling into a passive role. A quick and engaging icebreaker where team members express how they’re feeling using emojis. This activity helps people ease in a group and brings out their creativity without a lot of effort. Start by having pairs introduce themselves and creating a handshake.
Add a follow-up if you can or sum up the results as a segue for your next activity. Take a Picture of Your Shoes is a quick and simple way to get meeting attendees quickly warmed up by simply asking them to take a picture of their shoes and share it with the group. Set a time limit and encourage creativity – wacky shoes or fun photographs are absolutely encouraged. If you want to make it more fun, you can add more rules, such as each person must nominate a word starting with a letter of the alphabet and going through each letter in order. You can also choose a specific theme for the story, such as horror or romance. This game is a great way to get creative juices flowing and have a few laughs with your colleagues.
Set a time limit in advance and treat it as a fixed part of the schedule. Stick to activities where everyone participates simultaneously rather than one at a time. Polls, emoji check-ins, word clouds, GIF battles, and rapid-fire chat questions all scale well without slowing the session down.
By lifting each other up, the energy in the room tends to build and people in the group tend to feel seen and values as a result. What are you bringing to the meeting is a simple framing icebreaker that can work wonders to help participants mentally arrive in a session and share how they’re feeling at the outset. These ten icebreaker questions are some of our favourite tried-and-tested methods for kicking off a meeting and getting people warmed up in just a few minutes.
We accept our feelings, leaving behind what we doesn’t serve us right now. You can modify this exercise by encouraging anonymous posting and having the group guess who each photo belongs to, or ask the group to share around a particular theme. With groups where trust is high, ask each team member to share one of the most recent photographs on their phone and tell a story about it. 9 Dimensions is a powerful activity designed to build relationships and trust among team members. Next, ask everyone to add a coloured dot to each dimension based on whether they’re crushing it or have room to improve. Creating a sentence relating to a specific topic or problem with each person contributing one word at a time.
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How do you avoid frustrating or patronizing participants and ensure it feels like a good use of time? Just the facts is an engaging icebreaker that encourages participants to quickly recall and share factual information on a specific topic. Begin by selecting a relevant subject—such as “Effective Presentation Techniques” for a training session or trivia about your city for a casual gathering. Seated in a circle, participants take turns stating a fact related to the chosen topic, aiming to keep the flow rapid and avoid repetitions. These icebreakers are great for using the smaller group size to create opportunities for team bonding and deeper sharing between team members.
Dropping a question into a group without structure or clear rules of engagement can be met with an awkward silence. I prefer to use these kinds of ice breaker questions in breakout rooms or in smaller groups and to tailor the specific questions to fit the team I’m working with. Chat Waterfall is an effective virtual icebreaker that enables you to get contributions from everyone in a large group with ease. You might then ask people to share why they put themselves where they did, or simply use this as an opportunity to gauge overall energy in the room.
Virtual icebreakers for large groups can set a positive and collaborative tone for the entire meeting or session. Want if your virtual meeting place can be transformed into a time machine, transporting everyone back to various eras? As a virtual icebreaker, especially for large groups, the “Good Old Times” activity is an effective way to foster connections. In this activity, participants can share a memory, or story from their past that left an impact. This could be a favorite childhood toy, a memorable summer vacation, the first concert they attended, or even their first experience using the internet.
Encourage attendees to write down one piece of professional advice they’d share in 280 characters or less. Post responses to a physical wall or your event app feed using a dedicated hashtag. You get instant peer-led content and an easy conversation catalyst. During registration, ask attendees for a surprising personal or professional fact. Curate a short list and turn it into a “Find the Person” board at check-in or breaks.
Invite attendees to share a mildly controversial opinion, a contrarian view on something in their industry, or a take they suspect most people in the room would disagree with. It is a reliable way to spark lively discussion and get people comfortable sharing opinions early in a session. For groups who already know each other, you can push into more personal or playful territory.